A story that will send shivers down the spine of yacht surveyors is being played out in London’s High Court where a woman is suing a marine surveyor for £580,000 after her houseboat sank.

Liz Murray, 52, a freelance TV producer lost everything after her houseboat , the two-storey Queen of the Thames, sank at Shepperton on the River Thames in November 2007.

In a High Court writ Ms Murray is alleging marine surveyor Mike Chambers failed to measure the boat’s freeboard which she says affected its buoyancy.She is accusing him of negligence.

Pic by www.afloat.org.uk